This makes me sad. I had a brother who was diagnosed as a teen with bipolar w/schizoid tendencies. He also had manic depression added at 17. It was a very long hard road for my family. My mother passed away when he was 20 and that jolted him into a bad bender and then he "seemed" to just outgrow it and led a normal, very successful like for roughly 6/7 years. A month before his 31st birthday, he plunged into a sudden psychosis, stopped sleeping, began having gangs talking, delusions that he was God. My Dad and I tried to get help, but we were met with barriers at every turn. We could not get him to voluntarily commit himself, go get help, or get through to him. He would just go silent and go inside himself. He had full blown paranoia schizophrenia and leapt to his death at 30 yo. We are forever broken as well as his friends and roommate. Please get help. Do whatever it takes. If you can, see if you can get a short-term residential facility. In retrospect, my Dad feels that he should have sent him to one when he was a teen so that he learned coping skills and how to properly use medicine and self-care to guide himself through life. I now advocate for NIMH and 411 to help others. Godspeed.

23 is around the age when schizophrenia manifests in males. He definitely needs a psychiatrist. So sorry you're dealing with this. We have a family member (now in his 40s) with schizophrenia and it's devastating for the entire family.

He could be a targeted individual

1% of adults will have schizophrenia. 3% will have bipolar. Both can have paranoia. Both start later in life, usually, for young adults. Really only a psychiatric team can help figure it out for your family.

Anonymous wrote:I'd see a PhD first to confirm it's delusions or psychosis before going down the long path of meds. What if he IS being stalked by a gang? What if he doesn't need meds. You see any psychiatrist, you're getting meds. Tell them you're paranoid you're being followed, might be anti psychotic meds.

The OP is probably talking about gangstalking (a common delusion about being stalked/harassed/etc by groups of people)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_stalking